Friday, 26 October 2012

How Important Is Experience To The Church?

Anyone that has been
involved in church leadership will undoubtedly have heard the phrase “but
this is the way we have always done things”. However, in light of dwindling
church numbers, many
churches are seeking to make traditional services more appealing. Will the future of the church be found by increasing the role of personal experiences?

It is said that the three sources of theology are: scripture, reason,
and tradition. Sometimes experience is included, and this is known as the ‘Wesleyan
Quadrilateral’1. Macquarrie says that although not dominant,
experience should be viewed as preceding theology2; in other words,
it all starts with experience.

It is well reported that church attendance is decreasing3. Twinned
with a lack of young people4, it would appear that church isn't cutting it for many. Curiously, pilgrimages, potentially
highly spiritual experiences, are rising in popularity simultaneously5,6.
Although they fell into disfavour during the reformation, there is a historic
tradition of pilgrimage within Christianity. I find it interesting that less people are choosing to experience God in a traditional corporate church environment, whilst more are seeking counter-cultural personal experiences. Does declining church attendance
reflect a secularisation of society, or simply a cry for a different way of
experiencing God?

There is concern about placing too great an importance
on experience as “[theologies with an exaggerated emphasis on experience] can
easily become distorted by the particular types of experience out of which they
come”2. It is therefore important that the context of the theology is
taken into account. For this reason, a branch of theology known as contextual
theology has been developed. It has become especially popular among oppressed
groups, such as ethnic minorities and women.

Schleiermacher noted that “[Christian doctrines] always proceed
from a reflection on how the experience of one’s self-consciousness has been
changed through being in relation to the redeemer”7. Doctrine is
shaped by a transforming experience. We can see that the Bible is a collection
of individuals having encounters of the divine, and people today can have
revelations of God through reading it. However, the very act of reading the Bible
has in itself become a tradition. Essentially, experiences and tradition are
each important, but are undeniably inseparable.

It becomes clear that instead of simply challenging tradition, modern
culture seems to be seeking the experiential as a new way of meeting with God. Increasing the role of the experiential in church could increase attendance of previously under-represented groups such as men and young people. I think
the real danger is that Christians start viewing experience as the end to be desired, rather
than the means by which to have an encounter with God.
For this reason we must remember not to simply seek an experience, but
to seek the experience of God.